An ancient tree at the Shōren-in temple

An old tree at the Shoren-in temple

Jingu Michi road is abundant with buddhist temples and shinto shrines that offer a lot to see. One of the things that drew my attention were these old ancient trees at the Shōren-in temple’s website, a buddhist temple of the Tendai sect. This time we decided to admire the Camphor trees from the street instead of visiting the temple, but it is on my list of places to visit in the future. The entrance costs 500 yen for adults.

The processing of this image was quite simple. After some basic edits in Lightroom, I switched over to Photoshop where I removed power lines and other small but distracting objects. Then I opened the image in OnOne Perfect Effects, where I applied a paper texture selectively on the image to emphasize the warm tone and to add some vignetting to it. As you can see from Google street view below, the tree is as magnificent, if not even more spectacular, as it looks in the photo.

See this photo on Flickr

A bohemian waxwing eating a rowan berry

A bohemian waxwing eating a rowan berry

To continue the bird theme of the previous image I posted, here’s an older one from last winter. Unlike the last one, this image hasn’t been modified if you don’t count slight cropping. A flock of waxwings were feeding right next to the road one morning last October and provided a good opportunity to get some close-ups. I haven’t seen any this year, but perhaps it’s still too early. This autumn, there haven’t been as many rowan berries as last year either, but hopefully there’s enough to attract a few waxwings to our neighborhood.

See this image on Flickr

Rhinoceros ratsnake

Rhinoceros ratsnake

Rhinoceros ratsnake seems to have quite a few names, such as as Vietnamese longnose snake, and it must be the funniest looking snake in the world. Unfortunately I couldn’t go to Vietnam to photograph this one, but had to settle for Helsinki Zoo.

See this image on Flickr

A great tit with snow on its beak

A great tit with snow on its beak

I took this photo of a great tit last December on one of the last days of the year. We spent a day away from the city near Pieksämäki. It was a fairly cold day, but very productive in terms of bird photography. I haven’t had the time to go through all the images yet, but I know there are at least a couple of photos I like.

See this image on Flickr

License this photo on Getty Images